Before I put together my list of replied, “Hang tight brother…”
Well, today it would appear there’s a reason why we hadn’t seen any marketing material yet. THR reports Universal has dropped the film from their release schedule and appears to have no plans on releasing it as they are unwilling to spend the $20-40 million it would cost to market the film.
Given the fact it cost less than $5 million to make and not only stars Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring, Insidious 1 & 2) as well as Chris Pine, Jessica Alba, Brooklyn Decker, Ed Helms, David Hasselhoff and Ray Liotta this reeks of exactly what Steven Soderbergh was talking about in his State of Cinema speech last April where he talked about how spending $60 million to promote a $100 million film is a better proposition for a studio than spending that same $60 million to promote a $10 million film.
Carnahan took to Twitter in reaction to the story saying, “Guys. Bottom line. Stretch is fucking great. It’s funny. It’s touching. It’s unique and [Patrick Wilson] is absolutely brilliant in it.” He calls the Hollywood Reporter story “idiotic” and then continues talking about his film saying, “I think [Stretch is] as good or better than my best film and say that from the bottom of my heart. This movie will make it to you, trust me… the movie is gonna find its audience and that audience will love it. Whether that happens now or later is irrelevant. It’s gonna happen.”
Apparently the film’s producer, Jason Blum, has already attempted to find another distributor without any luck, so for now it sits in limbo. Carnahan’s last film, The Grey did good business for Open Road so if they can find a way to market it I wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up picking it up, “When?” is another question altogether as Carnahan is currently enjoying the success of his TV show “The Blacklist”, but in the realm of cinema has had a lot of trouble getting movies into theaters as of late, including the Daredevil movie as well as a Death Wish remake.
